Facebook’s New Page Design: 4 Features to Watch

Facebook just recently gave the News Feed a makeover and now the company plans on making changes to the design of Facebook Pages.

The goal of the new Facebook Page design is to “make it easier for Page Admins to find the info and tools they use most.”

Changes include:

a single column layout,

business info featured on a left column, and

new metrics section on the far right hand side of the Page highlighting the performance of Facebook ads, Likes and Post Reach

Looking at the screenshots Facebook provided in their announcement, there were four things that really stood out to me as a Page Admin. Let me explain…

4 Facebook Features to Watch

1. One-column page design may impact the Highlighted Post feature.

Today if you were to highlight a post on your Facebook Page, the post would expand and take the full width of your timeline making the content more prominent.

This tactic has been great in highlighting photo albums and drawing attention to specific posts, images and videos. This new one-column design looks like the Highlighted Post feature will be stripped away. It makes me wonder about the Milestones feature as well.

2. What to do if the People Talking About This metric disappears…

The “People Talking About This” or PTAT for short is a number is pulled from a variety of interactions that can occur on Facebook over the past seven days. It’s helped Page Admins gauge how their content in the last week has sparked conversations on the platform.

Some social media enthusiasts like to calculate the Engagement Rate of a Page by taking the PTAT and dividing it by the Page’s Total Number of Fans and benchmark that percentage against competitors.

After taking a closer look at the new Page design, this metric is removed (speculating) from the new left column. That means Page Admins will have to identify a new metric to benchmark against competitors. That’s where #3 comes in…

(Update 3/19/14: PTAT can be found under the Likes link)

3. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

“Pages to Watch” was released last August and allowed Page Admins to monitor five other Pages to see how many likes they were getting in a week. When the new design is complete, Page Admins can view additional metrics such as New Likes, Total Posts and Engagement This Week.

4. Tabs are moving under the “More” module.

Custom tabs today have prime real estate under a Page’s cover photo. They’re great for drawing a visitor’s attention and persuading them to take action like entering a contest or signing up for a newsletter.

Inside Facebook confirmed that custom apps/tabs are going to move under the “More” tab. With custom apps being “hidden”, this may negatively impact tab views and engagement.

So if you have a custom app that encourages your fans to sign up for your newsletter, I suggest you benchmark how many tab views you are getting now before the new page design is rolled out.

(Update 4/3/14: App thumbnail apps will also appear on the left hand column.)

While no one except Facebook knows for sure how these changes will impact Page Admins, there’s one thing I know for sure…the social media landscape is always changing and it will keep you on your toes. So to make sure you’re up to date on what’s new, subscribe to my newsletter below. And if you have questions about Facebook, feel free to leave a comment below.

About the Author

I’m an award-winning digital marketing strategist dedicated to helping brands and business owners like you, skip the guesswork on how to make their presence known online and start creating meaningful relationships with their customers online.

6 Comments

I didn’t know we were expecting a change, thanks for sharing. Now I can be prepared instead of a little frustrated when I wake up one day and my FB Page has lost it’s marbles 😉 It will be interesting to see how the new design actually works.

I agree, I’m interested to see how the new Page design will function as well. I’m really curious to see how it will impact on Page engagement. I went ahead and signed up my Sandbox Facebook Page for the wait list. That’ll give me a chance to test the new features.

I just signed up to beta test as well.
I’m more interested to see if there will be changes to the algorithm which have plummeted page reach to under 4% for many business pages.
It can only get better from here.